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For today’s instalment of Four Letter Word season, we’re hopping from ‘bane’ to ‘bain’ to ‘bath’, via poison gardens, doll’s eyes, alchemists, placentas and waterborne curses.
House band/husband Martin Austwick makes his annual-ish appearance on the show, and previews his catchy new song ‘Poison Garden’. Together we also recently made a musical piece about typefaces and torrid emotions, Souvenirs, and here is how to listen to it.
EXTRA INFO:
The curse tablets part of the episode originally appeared on episode 68 of the show, Curse Soup, so there’s a bunch more information there about throwing curses into water, plus photos of the baths at Bath.
“In addition to hunting wolves, it was believed that wolfsbane kept werewolves away” - yeah, I find every plant keeps werewolves away, actually.
The phrase ‘seeing a man about a dog’ “is thought to have originated in the United Kingdom. Its first known appearance was in an 1865 issue of The Anti-Teapot Review, a British periodical, in which a man employs it in order to avoid an awkward conversation with his wife.”
“In the Southern US, going to see a man about a dog signifies that one is going to urinate, while going to see a man about a horse signifies that one is going to defecate, and thus may be away a bit longer.”
Experimenting with cooking placenta (Cato’s cheese and honey cake, not the bodily organ).
“Even though ancient Romans did not have the terminology to describe the chemical reactions that made the alica placenta so much better than the non-alica version, they clearly could taste the difference.”
About Mary, the alchemist.
The Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm and the Transmission of Knowledge in the Islamic World.
Carl Linnaeus “is credited for naming Marigolds ‘Tagetes’. He named the flower in honor of Tages, the grandson of Jupiter in Roman mythology. Tages was a god of the underworld who specialized in haruspicy which is the useful art of foretelling the future by examining entrails.”
The Allusionist episode about ladybirds/ladybugs, a creature named for Mary, mother of Jesus.
Check out doll’s eyes, the white baneberry. Of course, all eyes of dolls are creepy and dangerous.
Check out Inwhiches, lovingly curated by Ashra!
Support the show at theallusionist.org/donate and as well as keeping this independent podcast going, you also get behind-the-scenes glimpses about every episode, fortnightly livestreams with me and my dictionaries, and the Allusioverse Discord community.
YOUR RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
manticore, noun: a mythical beast
typically depicted as having the body of a lion,
the face of a man, and the sting of a scorpion.
Origin Middle English, from Old French, via Latin from Greek mantikhoras, corrupt reading in Aristotle for martikhoras, from an Old Persian word meaning 'maneater'
CREDITS:
Martin Austwick is a singer, musician and podcast maker. Download his songs at palebirdmusic.com and Bandcamp, and listen to his podcasts Song By Song and Neutrino Watch - and the podcast we have both been in since 2007, Answer Me This.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, on the unceded ancestral and traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Find the Allusionist at youtube.com/allusionistshow, instagram.com/allusionistshow, facebook.com/allusionistshow, @allusionistshow.bsky.social… Essentially: if I’m there, I’m there as @allusionistshow.
Back in two weeks with a new episode - HZ.
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